Week 20: The identity spectrum

“Your appearance is now what we call Residual Self Image.  It is the mental projection of your digital self.”  - Morpheus to Neo, The Matrix, 1999.

I wanted to pick up a thread on last week’s theme of the identity spectrum.  Gender is one aspect our overall self-identity.  Another component is our personal perception of our physical bodies.  In one sense, gender is a sub-category of physical identity, because external secondary sex characteristics have a strong categorical tie with our gender identities, whether they are in agreement, disagreement, or some state of neutrality.

Physical characteristics can also have a profound influence on feelings of self-worth and ego.  Perhaps we are unsure of our capacity to be objective critics of ourselves.  Thus, we may rely heavily on the actions and reactions of others to inform our physical presentations of certain traits and our decisions about fashion choices, body modification, and other identifying characteristics.

Self-identity with respect to outward physical appearance recalls a similar question to the one I posed last week - the question of ideas found independently of social influence.  As with gender identity, it’s challenging to dissociate individualistic conclusions from those that have been taught by society as though they were true by default.  On the surface, we can look at things like the trend of the ideal sexual body in the media and its influence on our feelings of sexiness.  Going a layer deeper, we arrive at a place where we can begin to wonder about the origins of body stereotypes and other identity trends, and whether our physical self-identity is in fact a product of ourselves at all, or if it is an exclusive byproduct of imagery and social pressures.

Aristotle said something to the effect of “the virtue lies in the mean.”  It lends credibility to my writing when I paraphrase Aristotle because he was way smarter than me.  Point being that the truth of many things lies somewhere in middle-ground between extremes.  It’s very difficult to give a succinct and truthful definition of “self-identity,” even though I’ve been talking about it for 5 paragraphs.  Fundamentally, the identity pie chart that I use to represent “me” - a product of instinct, inborn genetic characteristics, and environmental factors - has unclear divisions.  

Thus we circumvent the binary - exclusively self-projected vs. the exclusive product of society and media - by suggesting that how we appear to ourselves must be some combination of inborn and external factors.  I make my self-image agree with how society says I ought to look to a certain extent.  This seems fairly obvious, but it raises another interesting question: which component of is the more valid contributor to self-identity?

Put another way, if we were to ask Aristotle, and I were to pretend that I could speak on his behalf, he might say “well, kids, it’s probably best to locate some comfortable balance of the two.  Nothing wrong with having a nice wardrobe, but make sure you’re comfortable in your own skin.”  It seems like a valid point, but it falls short of explaining why the highest value is given to a “balanced” self-identity over one that trends towards an extreme.  

In a similar way to the male-female gender spectrum, some individuals will be further along the physical identity spectrum towards one extreme or the other.  One one hand we may find, say, a monk who lives where there are no mirrors and has dedicated years to introspective meditation.  I feel it’s fair to say that such an individual would project a self-image with very little influence from fashion magazines.  On the opposite end of the dial, we find the most culturally immersed people who seem to draw exclusively from images and popular trends - and the need to stay ahead of them - to inform and define their physical self.  Which view is more authentic?

By what measure is the merit of one expression of physical identity weighed against another?  If we call someone a “fashion victim,” we imply that they are a slave to trends and pop culture.  But they might rebut by saying that approval from their peers, the masses, and their competition to stay ahead of the curve is empowering.  To present one’s self for constant physical scrutiny under the social microscope can lead to bold moves of creativity, outlandish experimentation with self-image, and it can be the trigger of massive cultural trends.  This seems to give high merit to this end of the spectrum since its consequences can generate large ripples in the pond of society.

Conversely, it seems tempting to idealize the quiet, introspective life of a monastery.  Surely an identically-dressed group of monks who are given to thoughtful, quiet contemplation would be much more self-aware and internally grounded in their construction of self-image.  Free of the constraints of popular approval, they seem to be in a position to evaluate their corporeal forms through a true, clear lens that is not clouded by the gaze of society.  But alternatively, they’re really boring.  “It’s so much fun out here!” cries the fashion mogul.  “Perhaps, but the fun is temporary, while the self is eternal,” the monk sagely replies.  Who is more correct?

When we identify and qualify our physical bodies, the origin of our perceptions may not be present in our thoughts.  Perhaps our self-assessment - of our looks, of our body type, of our feelings of attractiveness and ego - cannot be objective since it is unclear whether our reflection is internally consistent, or if it would appear different to us under less socially influenced circumstances.  I would suggest that the absence of this knowledge makes our personal role in determining our self-image a matter of where we choose to assign value on the identity-spectrum.  Just as a female is no more “correct” than a male, perhaps our understanding of physical identity is most valuable or most consistent when it places us at the point on the spectrum where we feel the highest sense of self-worth.


Word count:  999(!)*

*When I realized it was close, I totally did this on purpose.

Week 19: Questioning sex and gender

If you’re not watching the US election primaries, you might have missed the latest ad from Rick Perry, a Republican candidate for the 2012 nomination.  In the video, entitled “Strong,” (I’m not going to link to it, just search on YouTube if you want to watch) Perry attacks gay and lesbian members of the US military.  He suggests that the real victims of oppression in the US are the poor, poor christian school children who are supposedly barred from praying and celebrating Christmas in schools.

There has already been substantial backlash against Perry, and rightly so.  He is a disgusting human being, a bigot, and given his candidacy, unfortunately  representative of a significant number of Americans.  Volumes could be written about all the things that are wrong with this ad and the man who approved its message.

The firestorm is underway and I don’t have much to say politically that hasn’t already been said by a great many bloggers and journalists.  But since this topic is getting significant attention at the moment, I’d like to take the opportunity to throw a less political opinion into the ring.  It’s easy to forget amidst the highly charged debates that a major obstacle to resolving questions over lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights is the language that frames the debate, and the inherent conflicts and false dichotomies that arise from the terms themselves.

If you’re reading this, it’s probable that you were brought up in a home (and a culture at large) where you were taught from birth that sex and gender were inexorably linked, that there were clear divisions between men and women, and by extension, clear margins between sexual preferences.  This teaching makes any individual who doesn’t fit in a well-defined sex/gender box an other, an outsider, and it is dehumanizing.  It’s important here to emphasize that cultural impressions of sex and gender are not universally recognized facts or absolute truths, even though they’re presented that way and taken for granted as such.

A glance through an anthropology or sociology textbook will bring up numerous examples of cultures - both past and present day - in which there are several genders recognized depending on but not limited to the sex, age, and personal desires of the individual.  I’m not an anthropologist, so if you’d like to learn more on the specifics, do a quick Google search for “the third gender” and have a browse through some of the articles.  Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

There are millions of people who live in gender roles that are not clearly defined by man/woman/gay/straight dichotomies.  It’s unfortunate that the spectrum of gender and sexuality has been turned into a political battleground.  It turns an issue that ought to exist within the domain of the individual and their private relationships into a divisive piece of political and cultural theater.  Parties on both sides put up walls and sling stones and arrows at each other.  Meeting at some common ground between the battalions is rarely the objective; it’s all about enforcing the “correct” view on the Other.  And it’s upsetting that the language being used to frame the debate victimizes people by planting them in a camp that’s alienated by its very definition.

Now this is obviously an oversimplification of an extremely complex issue, but I only have 1,000 words to get through it, so if you would, please bear with me as I put on my hippie hat for a moment and dream of a better world.

I like the scene at the beginning Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life.”  A birth has taken place and when the mother (Terry Jones in a wig) asks about the sex of the baby, Graham Chapman replies “...I think it’s a bit early to be imposing roles on it, don’t you?”  It’s purely for comedic effect, but if you’re so inclined, you can read some pretty interesting questions in to that statement.  What if we didn’t tell everybody right from the get go that they were a boy and therefore ought to like girls, or visa versa?

Before I go too far down the queer rabbit hole, of course it’s true that we have an instinctive, biological imperative to pass on our genes and keep the species going.  Evolution and such.  Obviously the male/female sexual relationship (in the absence of reproduction science, an issue for some future essay) is necessary to keep our species alive.  Does this, however, mean that we are obligated to conform to gender roles that put us into the sorts of culturally sanctioned relationships that produce these “legitimate” children (monogamous, heterosexual marriages/partnerships?)  My answer is a resolute no.

I believe that it’s worth asking yourself how many of your ideas about your sexuality and your role as a man or woman are your own and how many have been placed there by cultural influence.  It’s kind of like the baby nature vs. nurture question for sexual identity and gender.  It’s an extremely difficult question to answer, and I can’t say with any certainty that I’ve sorted it out either.  Regardless, I think that the act of contemplating and challenging our cultural teachings is a very important step in breaking the false dichotomies that are implicit in the words gay, straight, and other definitions that compartmentalize our bodies, our identities and our sexuality.

It’s been said but it bears repeating - if we have love to give and there are people deserving of it, why should physiology matter?  The root of this entire conflict and the problem with horrible people like Rick Perry who perpetuate it is based in a falsehood - the notion that we must choose a gender and a sexual preference and conform to its ideals.  Before they reach sexual maturity, it’s totally unnecessary to disclose the sex of a child.  The consequences of telling people extend about as far as the colour of the clothes and type of toys that they’ll be getting for their birthday.  Why is it that once we cross the threshold of sexual awakening that it immediately becomes necessary to compartmentalize ourselves into a pattern of thought and behaviour that’s associated with strict, defining characteristics of sex and gender?  Maybe some day, we could agree to let people love who they want to, how they want to, when and where they want to, without requiring them to pick a team.

Word count: 1,070

Week 18: Finance and physics

As you are no doubt aware, the state of the global economy is messy.  There is massive inequality in the distribution of private wealth.  In addition, a culture of debt in pervades developed economies.  As a consequence of deregulation, irresponsible government and consumer spending, and undue influence from private interests, places like Greece, Italy, and Japan now carry public debt that exceeds 100% of GDP.  Japan is the most indebted with over 200% debt to GDP ratio.  The USA will cross the 100% threshold some time next year. [CIA World Factbook]

Notwithstanding the technicalities of economics, let us for simplicity agree that massive inequality in wealth and out-of-control public spending has created a perilous economic situation worldwide.  There are many actors on the global stage attempting to right the ship by providing corporate bailouts, tampering with currency and interest rates, and propping up banks and governments through institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.  I believe that their efforts will ultimately fail.

I will attempt to explain my position with an analogy.  Global finance is far too complex for average people like me to understand, but I believe that a reasonably clear picture can be framed using a simple and fundamental law of physics.  I will do this by simply replacing the quantity of energy with the quantity of money.  Before we continue, let me caveat my statements with three clauses:

1) I am not an economist, nor am I a physicist, and my understanding of both economics and thermodynamics is elementary at best.
2) All analogies are inherently flawed.  The analogue shares characteristics with the primary concept, but is not derived from it, thus it fails to explain the intricacies of the primary concept.  
3) I arrived at this specific idea independently, but it is not original - the underlying concept of maximum entropy production has been applied to discussions of finance and other social sciences by scholars and writers far more educated and astute than me.

Right then.  Here’s a very, very brief physics lesson and some generalized definitions for the purposes of this esssay:

Thermodynamics: The study of time-dependent effects (temperature, pressure, chemical reactions, etc) of physical bodies on their surrounding environment within the constraints of that environment.

1st Law of Thermodynamics: Conservation of energy (energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed in form) requires that a system will exchange energy with its surroundings by way of heat or work.

2nd Law of Thermodynamics: It is impossible to produce positive heat flow from a colder body to a warmer body.  In essence, inequalities in temperature and other time-dependent variables represent a potential difference that will always decay from higher to lower until both are equal, given enough time.  This leads to the central concept of this essay:

Entropy:  The measure of disorder in a system.  When a system is decaying towards equilibrium - a room with an open window reaching the same temperature as outside, for instance - entropy measures the progress of this decay.  When it reaches equilibrium, it has achieved maximum entropy.
In summary, when a system has minimal or no entropy, there is a large inequality in energy distribution - think of water trapped behind a dam as another example.  The potential exists, should the dam break, to equalize the volume and elevation of the water on both sides of the dam.  A break in the dam represents the most efficient path to maximum entropy - the “default” state of any system where energy is exchanged.  If the dam breaks, maximum entropy will be achieved in a finite time as the rate of flow, volume, and elevation of the water is equalized on both sides of the dam.
[scienceworld.wolfram.com, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/thermodynamics, entropylaw.com]

Now let’s apply this concept to global finance.  As of September 2011, the USA owes 3.634 trillion dollars plus interest to its 10 largest foreign creditors, 1.148 trillion of which is owed to China.  This represents approximately 20% of the total US public debt, which is currently increasing at a rate of about 10-11% of the GDP annually.  This massive imbalance on the budget sheet represents a high potential credit risk which, in thermodynamic terms, should decrease over time until a balanced budget (economic equilibrium) is restored.  [gpoaccess.gov/usbudget]

As it stands, debt and therefore credit risk is increasing significantly, and the dam that holds American debt at bay - confidence in the US economy by foreign investors - is weakening, which is evident in the recent decrease in America’s credit rating.  If the dam were to break (America goes bankrupt), the tidal wave of its massive unpaid debt would crash through the global economy, devastating the financial systems of every country in the world.

In this example, maximum entropy would mean that US debt and credit risk was distributed more or less uniformly amongst its creditors who, having high confidence in the American economy, would lend money at a fairly low interest rate, keeping American debt low and repayments manageable.  It would also add value to the US dollar, increasing its purchasing power, which would thus increase incentive for foreign investors to use the dollar to purchase goods and services worldwide.  This notion represents an ideal, if simplistic, foreign economic relationship that is directly in line with the law of entropy.

There is a force that tends to pull economic disparity back towards a state of equilibrium, be it the public interest, public fiscal policy, or the actions of corporations with significant economic clout.  Debts demand to be repaid.  If the disparity is greatly out of proportion with what might be considered a “safe limit,” the potential difference between the actual entropic state and maximum entropy is much higher.  Therefore, the potential corrective force is also much higher, and carries a much greater risk to those who are in its path.

Legislators and bankers are fighting a losing battle against a monetary force that is for all intents and purposes analogous to a fundamental force of nature.  There is far too great a disparity between the rich and the poor, and the creditors and their debtors, to be sustainable.  The use of bailouts - basically robbing the public purse for the sake of a few more profitable quarters for the banks - is tantamount to using chewing gum to patch the cracks in a dam.  Eventually, the massive inertia of an unbalanced system pushing back towards maximum entropy will destroy the last attempts and preserving the status quo.

Word count: 1,092

Week 17: The fundamentals

When I was growing up, a lot of people told me that I was smart.  As well intentioned and complimentary as this may have been, it wasn’t helpful.  Being young and immature, I hadn’t reached a point where I was ready to question the implications of thinking one’s self more intelligent than the average.  For the record, I don’t really believe that I’m any smarter than most people, and I don’t say that just to be humble.

The two most important things I’ve learned so far in life are the following: 1) I should never miss a good opportunity to keep my mouth shut, and 2) all I know is that I know nothing (thanks, Socrates).  But once again, in my youth I hadn’t come across these gems of wisdom just yet, and I was inclined to believe that I was smart and I wasn’t afraid to open my mouth to let everybody know.

One of the long-term consequences of this early behaviour is a lifelong problem with developing good work habits.  We all make our own universe; when people told me that I was smart, I chose to interpret that to mean that I didn’t need to work as hard as everybody else to make it through school.  I slacked off and rarely studied.  It’s true that I didn’t find high school to be particularly challenging, but that’s because I chose not to challenge myself.  I did the minimum work required to pass in most cases.  If I was really smart like some people said, I would have realized that the intelligent choice would have been to apply myself even more than everybody else and elevate my understanding to the next level instead of being arrogant and ignorant.

It’s been a decade since I started high school, so with the benefit of hindsight, I’m a lot better at catching myself now before I slip in to self-destructive patterns of behaviour that stem from thinking that I don’t need to study to understand.  One of my least favourite things to hear is that I’m successful because I’m “smart.”

As a father, I’m proud of my son and I know that he’s a smart boy, but I also know that I won’t be doing him any favours by telling him that all the time.  I think that it’s important to caveat that sort of compliment with the admonition that intelligence is never a predictor of success.  It’s a grave error to draw a causal link between smarts and success when there a tenuous correlation at best.  Nobody who achieves true mastery of any pursuit has ever done so by virtue of their intelligence alone.  It’s the same idea that makes people think that some individuals are “naturally talented.”

There’s no question in my mind that everyone’s brain comes out wired differently.  Some people will already have a neural structure that reinforces learning in certain areas while struggling with it in others.  That’s why there are a lot of different learning styles - auditory, visual, tactile, etc.  The same concept holds true for things like math and science, musical ability, artistic ability and other talents as well.  But like intelligence, natural talent is a poor predictor of actual mastery of that art form.  To draw an example from my own life, I’ve been playing music on a few different instruments for most of my life, but if you sat me down with a piece of sheet music that I hadn’t seen before, I would butcher it for my first several attempts.  I definitely have a natural inclination towards playing music and learning instruments, but I haven’t practiced the fundamental theories and basic techniques with any sort of rigor or discipline for several years, so I’m not actually very good at any of them.

We’ve all watched, awestruck and perhaps a bit jealous, as some tremendously talented individual or group presents their craft.  Less apparent than, say, the fantastic musical performance unfolding before our eyes is the process that allowed it to take place.  Namely, the thousands of hours that were invested in study, practice, writing and arranging.  It’s easy to forget about the process or initiative that brought a talent to life.

*If you chanced upon a talented graffiti artist’s notebook, you would see the process that led to the bold experiment with letters on a wall.  The chosen tag, now executed with speed and precision, would have been repeated hundreds of times until the artist was confident in his handstyle.  The artist would have attempted, set aside, and developed letters and forms over thousands of iterations before they could be understood and duplicated.

If you were listening when a drummer executed a stylish fill, you heard the end result of perhaps thousands of hours of practice.  The accents and the patterns in the interplay between the hands and the feet may have been composed in a very careful and deliberate attempt.  They may have emerged from a moment of musical serendipity when they played what felt right and it came out golden.  Either way, the drummer had to recognize how the appropriate application of certain rudiments leads to a certain feel and which ones lend themselves to particular styles of music.

This thread will be familiar with anybody who practices to develop a talent.  It takes a basic manoeuvre, a rudiment, that is practiced until it becomes instinctive.  Then the artist (or scholar, or teacher, etc) can call it up and execute it with speed and precision and deft skill.

It makes me sad when people say that they’re not smart or talented enough to learn how to do something.  When confronted with a high-level presentation of skill, it can be extremely intimidating - frustrating, even - for a novice.  But what is being performed is simply a higher order presentation of the fundamentals.  The basic ingredients are simple and logical and anyone can learn them.  Math, music, art, writing - it’s all there for everybody who’s willing to put in the work.

Word count: 1,002

*Big shout out to my good friend, Adrian, who's been putting in work for years and is now seeing the fruits of his labour. Check out his blog: http://ajalouden.blogspot.com

Week 16: Option paralysis

This week, I wanted to pick up on a thread from last week’s ramblings - the idea of option paralysis.  The basic meaning is the hesitance and uncertainty that comes with the modern encounter with technology and digital society.  Limitless access to information can cause a crippling force against choice and decisiveness because it gives rise to virtually infinite options.  For an extrapolation, I quote Ben Weinman, the guitarist of The Dillinger Escape Plan, who explains the concept that spurned the album of the same name:

“...[t]he inspiration of the record is the idea that there are so many stimuli going on right now, there are so many computers, iPhones, TVs, media, that nobody really knows what's important anymore. There is no underground anymore because everything is homogenised and coming through the same filter. There are far fewer instances of certain circumstances affecting specific scenes, music and culture. Technology has become a substitute for actually living and experiencing things.”

The internet and mobile access to social networking has given us access to information at unprecedented and ridiculous levels.  This recalls my musings on aporia back in week 6.  This is an aporia with technology.  We have what is essentially an infinite number of potential encounters with new information, with respect to the finite number of hours that can be spent online.

This is in contrast to a time period in the very recent past when it was impractical for private households to have personal computers and wireless internet access.  The amount of information that is freely available to public users has ballooned exponentially in only a few years.  This is what Ray Kurzweil describes as “the knee of the curve” in his futurist writing (The Singularity is Near, 2005.)

Because of our short lifespans and short memories, we all tend to view progress as more or less linear.  It’s difficult for us to remember or access a frame of reference that extends backwards in time by more than a few years and make meaningful comparisons.  As an example from my own experience, I can remember the iterative progress from our family’s first CD player - an unwieldy brick of technology that was slow to load and prone to skipping - to my portable CD player barely larger than the disc it played which could be shaken and even dropped without skipping.  Pretty impressive, but it’s hard to gauge an actual “rate” of progress based on these improvements.

Even though it’s fairly obvious that the pace of technology is accelerating (consider  the decreasing interval and increasing functionality between generations of smart phones), even the view that things seem to be speeding up as we go forward is a massive understatement of the actual situation.  This gets us back to Kurzweil’s idea of the “knee” of the exponential curve that our technological progress is drawing across the plane of history.

The basic explanation of this notion is that the pace in areas such as information technology and processor speed are expanding in on a logarithmic scale, rather than on a linear scale, and they are pulling along all related facets of technology and access to information.  Using a simple decimal example, if the pace of technology was linear and it took 1 year to add 100 gigabytes of hard drive space, in 2 years, the original value will have increased by 200 gigabytes.  However, since the pace is exponential, there is an upward trend to the speed which creates a positive feedback loop to “steepen” the curve.  Using a similar example, if it takes 3 years to increase the capacity of a hard drive by a factor of 10, it will only take 6 years to subsequently increase the capacity 100 times.  If the original capacity was 10 gigabytes, it would carry 100 gigabytes in 3 years, and almost one terabyte within 6 years.

This brings me back around to the original premise.  Easy access to indefinite realms of information technology makes it incredibly difficult to allocate time appropriately, or even to have a good idea of what the appropriate allocation might be.  I currently have 6 tabs open at the top of my browser.  Ask me about allocating one’s time and resources carefully...

I can’t remember who said it, but I heard a quote recently that resonated with me on a pretty fundamental frequency: We’ve sacrificed knowledge in the name of information.  I think that one of the greatest challenges of this era (or maybe I’m projecting my own great challenges on our era) is to discover a way to filter the information into useful knowledge, rather than getting swept away by the current of the information explosion and losing our way in its trends.

I’ve written about the internet and technology a fair bit - it’s a recurring theme that anybody who reads this blog will have figured out by now.  What makes it so interesting to me is the question that I keep coming back to: how do I avoid option paralysis in the face of the incredible force and traction that gives massive networks the power to pull people along in their wake?

How many times have you seen some version of this phrase: “...if you support _________, post this in your status.”  Or perhaps, one of my personal favourites, “sign this online petition to support/discard/sustain/improve ______________”.  It’s persuasive to think that participation in online discussions of real-world issues is sufficient to affect change, and I’m as guilty of it as anybody.  Take, for example, this blog.  Just bits and bytes on a digital page.

I believe that the best way to take full advantage of the explosion of information technology is to exploit its potential to bring people together in real-world environments to share what they’ve learned online.  It requires dedication and discipline that I do not always have in sufficient quantities, but it’s something I’m working on.  We’ve seen it give rise to amazing social movements like the Arab Spring and the ongoing Occupy Wall Street movement, and it can only get bigger from here.  I’m incredibly excited by the possibility of opening public dialogue and making revolutionary movements out of the capabilities that information has given us.  I hold up these movements as a brilliant example of how to overcome option paralysis.  Let’s not allow technology to become a substitute for living.  Let’s make it a way to enhance it.

Word count:  1,070

P.S. Please go listen to "Option Paralysis" by The Dillinger Escape Plan. Srsly.

Week 15: Stream of consciousness writing

/begin

One of my most daunting challenges in life is my tendency to get distracted.  I stray from the task at hand and fail to adopt constructive routines, even when I’m fully aware that if I were to stick with them, I would benefit greatly.  It’s a strange piece of cognitive dissonance - I’m entirely conscious of my shortcoming in this area, and I even find myself thinking “I ought to be doing ___________” instead of whatever less constructive activity I’m doing at the moment.  Somehow, though, I still manage to waste a great deal of time each week on relatively pointless pursuits.  It’s time that I’ll never get back, and I honestly, life is damn short.  It sounds incredibly trite to say so, but I don’t care.  

Enjoying life is paramount.  I don’t think, though, that enjoyment can be defined as frivolous pursuits of short-term pleasure.  There’s a place for it in the overall picture, and there’s nothing like it at certain moments.  For instance, I’m writing this at 1:30 AM, having just arrived home from seeing Napalm Death play at a local club.  I never thought I would get to see them here in Victoria, seeing as how they’re from England and probably don’t get a massive amount of tour support money to come this far west.  Regardless, I was blown away by their performance.  The sound guy didn’t have a great handle on things, and the PA system was much larger than what was required for the space.  But it’s punk rock, dammit.  Grindcore, even!  Loud loud loud loud!  It was the most intense, rabid display of metal I’ve seen onstage in a long time.

The point of all that is this: I’m going to have a crappy morning at school due to lack of sleep and ringing ears from all of the chaos.  It’s worth it, though, because I got to experience first-hand the absolute aural destruction of one of the seminal bands in grind metal.  Awesome.

I can enjoy the experience because it’s a rarity, and because I get to come home and write about how killer it was to be there.  Could not enjoy it nearly as much if I was out every week seeing bands.  Taking the long view of this whole thread, the thought that ties it all together for me is that it’s not a major distraction, or an activity that’s going to cause other aspects of my life to suffer.  I’ll study a bit less tomorrow morning, but that’s alright.

The problem is that simple, less enjoyable things that are genuinely distractions instead of proper life experiences (and let’s face it, if you have yet to see Napalm Death live, you’re not experiencing the proper kind of life.)  Funny pictures on the internet, Facebook, some news articles, a documentary about wild animals, a good book from the library.  It’s all legitimate entertainment and I’d even say that it’s important to use the internet as a resource and to stay socially connected.  But it’s so ridiculously easy to get sucked in and lose hours following tangential threads of topics, discussions, articles... it gets to be too much!  Argh, too much!  Too much information!

One of my favourite albums from last year was The Dillinger Escape Plan’s “Option Paralysis.”  The title refers to the loose overall concept of the album which is the paralytic effect of an overwhelming volume of sensory input.  I certainly suffer from it.  It stays my hand from study and music and even family at times, and keeps me from accomplishing what I feel that I ought to.

I think that it’s a better time than ever to listen to what artists have to say.  Music is so much more honest and telling than the news or the talking heads or the politicians and their sound bytes.  We are all incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to hear so much fantastic music every day.  There’s a wealth of brilliant music to be found within a few keystrokes of where you are right now.

The feeling that “Option Paralysis” invoked was one of recognition.  Maybe I enjoyed it for extremely narcissistic reasons, or perhaps even solipsistic reasons, if I can get philosophical for a second.  I saw a little bit of myself reflected back at me through a piece of art.  It kind of made me feel like I existed, because there was some reflection of my own struggles and thoughts that also existed in tangible form.  Some piece of me was created unintentionally, and I found it and internalized it through music.

I don’t know if that makes any sense, but I’m sticking with it.  It worked when I was typing it out.  The point of this whole exercise was to write for 1,000 words without stopping, then put it out there in original form.  I threw out 2 drafts this week because I felt that they were not good enough.  I wasn’t happy with my little word creations.  Consequently, I’m late posting this one.  The next Saturday deadline looms large, but I’ll do it on time this week.

When my overall sense of organization and routine suffers, I can tell right away because my writing suffers.  It’s largely because I spend less time doing it, but it’s also because the writing I produce is less reflective of how I want to portray myself through my writing.  The voice doesn’t come out very well.  I haven’t nurtured my creative faculties enough lately, and that’s why I’m doing this.  Time to right the apple cart, as they say.  

This is most certainly not the best or most interesting piece of work that I’ve produced for this blog.  It’s probably rambling and derivative and disorganized, and if you’ve read this far, I thank you for sticking with me through it.  I’m trying to exorcise some demons and cast them into the internet abyss.  I’ve found that I can motivate myself by creating real deadlines and making them public, so that when I miss them, like I did with my blog this week, I feel guilty and people know about it, so I get called out on it.  Gotta make a similar arrangement for school and work.  I most certainly have not studied enough or worked enough in the last couple of weeks, and I can come up with a whole bag of excuses, but none of them will hold up under scrutiny.

Thus, I pledge to you, dear friend and reader, that I will do better.  I have many shortcomings and many faults.  I sometimes lack the strength to overcome them on my own.  If I make them public enough, maybe the shame of public failure will keep me a bit more line.  The folks here at home are wonderful, but they’re too forgiving.

I’ll get up early in the morning and work to earn some money.  I’ll study more in the evening, because if my grades improve, I can qualify for scholarships, and free money is awesome.  I’ll play more music and I’ll spend more time outside with my family, and my enjoyment of life will increase as a result.

/end


Word count:  1,194
Written between 1:43AM and 2:02AM, Wednesday, October 26th, 2011.

Week 14: The Blazing Violets

Yep, I was listening to the band before they got big, man.  Back in the day when Paul Emme was the bassist.  You probably wouldn’t remember him, since you didn’t go to those gigs for grade 9 grad parties in tiny community halls.  I was in the band before anybody was listening to them, bro.  Scene points.  I rake ‘em in like craps winnings.

I basically installed myself as the de facto roadie of The Blazing Violets and didn’t leave until Codie McLachlan, singer and lead guitarist, relented and told me I could join the band - on rhythm guitar and keyboards, incidentally.  The fact that I was minimally talented on both of these implements was of little consequence.  I’ll never forget the first day that I crashed through the door with a huge grin and the Fender amp I’d just bought that was WAY too loud for the small basement that we spent years jamming in.  We were way too loud in general, but this was at a time that we prized volume over content in most respects.  More loud = more fun.  Simple.

My first stint in the band was great fun and lasted for the grade 12 year of high school plus the year after, until I decided that I’d move to Charlottetown for some reason.  The fact that I was in a band with big tour plans and engaged to be married didn’t really factor into my decision process.  Making sensible decisions has never been my strong suit.  I’m much better at being broke and indecisive about careers, school, and life in general.

When I moved back from Charlottetown a year later, I called Codie right away.  Our conversation went something like this:

Me: “Dude, I’m back in town.”  
Codie: “Dude!  Come over!”
Me: “I will, we should jam ASAP!”
Codie: “Yeah man, our drummer just bailed, ever thought about playing the drums?”

I didn’t even own a pair of drum sticks, let alone a kit, but my excitement about the prospect of rejoining my friends in a musical endeavor far outweighed the obstacle of my ineptitude.  I also had the immense fortune of sharing rhythm section duties with Ty Boyd.  Some of you already know him as one of the grooviest, funkiest bass players ever.  I learned how to play drums by following his bass lines.

It turns out that playing drums is the best thing in the world.  And I was lucky enough to do it in the company of Codie, Ty, and Haley Reap, our rocking keyboard player and sometimes lead vocalist.  I never took a single moment for granted.  We weren’t exactly a super serious gonna-get-rich-and-famous type of outfit, but we made a real attempt at writing and performing great tunes.  A lot of bands fail quickly because egos and other commitments get in the way.  We were able to hold it together as the same lineup for over three years, and only missed a handful of weekly jams in that entire time.  Codie, Ty and Haley are still my best friends in the world, and it’s all thanks to the music that we made together.

Stories from our time together could (and probably will eventually) fill several 1,000 word entries.  One of my favourites to recall, though, is our recording session.  We entered The Physics Laboratory with producer and all-around rad dude Terry Paholek, and emerged with a whole new view on our music and our creative process.  We spent 36 of 48 hours locked in a small room together.  We learned a great deal about our skills and our limitations, and felt pretty good about what we were able to accomplish on a shoestring budget of both time and money.  We came out better players and better friends, and our creativity and songwriting output exploded.  It taught me a lot about music and gave me a brand new perspective on the band and my role in it.

The two years that followed our recording session encompassed some of the most enjoyable moments of my entire life.  We gigged regularly and wrote another recording’s worth of songs.  I was never happier than in those beautiful instances when it would all click and our performances turned out seamless and satisfying, and we walked off stage high on music.

Some day I’ll write an extended piece about the band.  It’s second only to my own family as my greatest commitment of time, energy and love to date.  The bass drum head that I used is up on my wall and the recordings are on my hard drive, and I still love my bandmates like family.  We had more fun together than I’ve ever had with anybody else in my life, and I’ll forever be thankful for it.  Being in The Blazing Violets gave me new ways to explore and make music.  It was horizon-broadening and mind-expanding, and came with challenging and powerful experiences.  It gave me the opportunity to share something truly profound with my closest friends, and by extension, to share it with a few thousand more people over the few years we were together.

There’s no question that every future musical endeavor will be weighed against the one I had with the Violets, and I’m glad that we managed to set the bar so high.  Most long term relationships end badly, but we managed to skirt most of the silly egomania, and sitcom-family drama that frequently accompanies groups of musicians.  I can look back on it now for the rest of my life with not a shred of bitterness or regret, knowing that what I did was good, and that it brought out the best in me.

So, Ty, Haley, Codie, and of course Terry & Sabina for all the support, these words are dedicated to you.  I owe all of you a lot more than I could ever get across in a few paragraphs.  There’s no feeling quite like the feeling of hitting that big cymbal crash and everybody stopping with a nice, tight punch at the end.  Mein herz brennt.


Word count:  1,010

Week 13: A letter

Dear Friend,

I don’t know where you are, what you’re doing, or how you happened to arrive at such a place.  I don’t even know your name.  All that I know is that you and I have a lot in common, because we’re both alive at a time when our access to the whole world and its creations is almost without limits.

It’s possible that you’re much younger than I am, or much older, but that’s alright.  We’re both alive at an amazing moment in history.  Distances mean very little.  You might even be reading this from halfway across the world the same night that I post it.  We live in a time when the entire spectrum of human understanding is ours for the discovering, and I am grateful for it.

The pace of change in the world is accelerating.  It’s never been moving faster than it is right now, and it’s only going to continue, exponentially, along this trend.  So if you’re reading this in October of 2011, this might all seem current and not especially interesting.  I wrote this letter to you, dear friend, to leave it as a digital artifact.  I don’t have any neural implants that make me ridiculously intelligent.  Maybe you do, if you’re reading this in October of 2100.  Things must be very different.  You might be able to take some cues from my words and recreate my world in a completely immersive virtual environment.  

I sit at my computer most nights and go exploring.  I try to interact with the world and thereby with you in some meaningful way.  With this unfettered access, it’s easy to take and take and not to give the energy back.  I’m writing this at a moment when the ease of access to social media and online content is at unprecedented heights.  I can talk in real time to somebody on a space station from my cell phone on the bus.  Pretty amazing.  But if you’re reading this in 2100, maybe you’re on a space station.

It can be distracting.  This technology came quickly, and it’s vastly more entertaining than anything else that came before.  We haven’t really adapted to carefully regulate our access to that sort of stimulus.  It’s easy to be pulled in by the forces of the internet, especially since there’s no real need to contribute.  I can be a pure consumer in that sense.  But I find that it’s like making a lot of withdrawals from a bank and being shocked when your balance comes up low.  If I spent half as much time producing content as I did consuming it, I’d probably manage 2,000 words per week instead of 1,000.

Discipline isn’t widely enforced anymore and regimental behaviour is somewhat of a thing of the past.  I live in a time and place of immense privilege, but I worry that many people - even me, sometimes -  seem to take it for granted.  I suppose that’s because a lot of our parents got an education and worked hard.  We didn’t have to work especially hard to sustain the momentum.  We just lucked out.  Lucky us, we say.  How grateful we are to live in this amazing place.  Gratitude seems to be expressed verbally in most cases, rather than actually.

What I’m most grateful for is the relative stability of my lifestyle.  I might let my guard down a bit too much.  I might be forgetting to stay well prepared for unexpected circumstances.  But it gives me the time and the resources to ponder the sorts of questions that someone who’s worried about where their next meal might come from would never have the chance to ponder.

I might just be hallucinating all of this, you see.  I’ve read a lot about the impeding singularity in which our biological bodies become fully integrated with technology - perfect integrated software/hardware human systems.  Who’s to say that it hasn’t already happened?  I might just be a line of code that’s been written to have a certain degree - or a certain perceived degree - of mental autonomy.  How could I possibly know if what I’m experiencing in this life is real?  Despite this - real or not - it sure seems real.  I can take in the world through my senses.  Am I deluding myself if I chose to believe that this is reality?  Can I be happy - blissfully ignorant, even - if I believe that I have the freedom to choose even if I do not?  Am I a slave in my own mind?

It’s tough to ponder those sorts of things while keeping a regular life well up on the rails and chugging along.  I suppose that’s where striking a careful balance between accepting my perception and questioning it is important.  Maybe by 2100, we will have worked out the bugs in our brain programs and we’ll simply be able to design reality however we chose.  Maybe we can already?  I hope I’m there for it.

I live at a time, dear friend, where the world is running in a billion directions at once at breakneck speed.  It seems that revolution is pending.  The old guard can’t hold on for much longer; they’re too few, and the masses of dissenters are too many.  People are up and out and engaged and active.  And here I am, in my kitchen with a computer, casually making commentary as people far more passionate than I are taking to the streets.

Despite my relative inaction on the political front, I would like to think that I have something worthwhile to contribute to my small pocket of the known universe.  I never expect to have a long reach, but I certainly have the chance to affect my own little circle.  I have a beautiful family, and we get by alright, with a little help from our friends.  In case you missed the reference, that’s a lyric from a Beatles song - one of the greatest bands of all time.  You should check them out if you haven’t heard them before.  I hope that in 2100, one of the default applications in the human brain 2.0 will be access to the entire catalogue of human music on demand.  If that’s the case, flip back about 150 years and feel it for yourself.  I hope that I’m alive when that one gets booted up.

Dear friend, I’ve exceeded my self-imposed word limit, but it’s hard not to be excited about all of the interesting things that are going on all over the world.  Occam once said (and I’m paraphrasing here) that the best solution is the simplest.  Maybe by the time you’re reading this, we will have tamed the chaos, simplified our ways of interaction, and life will be much more peaceful.  But maybe that would mean that it would be much less interesting, and I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.


Sincerely yours,

John


Word count:  1,158